Emotional Intelligence

What is Emotional Intelligence?

To put it simply, Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand your own
emotions and those of others. With that understanding , you can manage
your emotions, and your relationships with others, in order to live a more
fulfilling and productive life.

In recent decades there has been an explosion in our understanding of how
our emotions work - how they are created in our brains and bodies; how they
affect our thoughts and behaviour; why our own emotions can be difficult to
understand and describe.

Emotions are wonderful things. They are our gateway to the world. They
bring colour and contrast to our experiences; they keep us safe and help us
reach our goals; they allow us rich and deep relationships with other people,
and even animals. But they are also powerful, and can overwhelm our ability
to think straight or act for our own or other people's best interests. Learning
about emotions, and learning how to manage them, means that they
become a force for good and not destruction.

Research has shown that people who manage their emotions positively (
who have emotional intelligence) are more likely to be successful not only in
their personal lives but in their working lives.

Emotional intelligence is not fixed; we are all more intelligent about some
aspects of our emotional lives than others, and happily we can all learn
more about how emotions work and how to manage them.